Panasonic Lumix CM1 is a 20MP Leica cameraphone with a 1-inch sensor

Panasonic has announced its new Lumix DMC-CM1 at Photokina 2014 in Cologne, a new Android smartphone featuring a 20MP camera with a whopping 1-inch image sensor and a Leica lens.

Panasonic Lumix CM1

The device will be the first smartphone made by the Japanese company in over two years, and its imaging-focused quality aims to set a new benchmark for the cameraphone category. The CM1 comes with a 28mm equivalent f/2.8 Leica Elmarit lens, a mechanical shutter, a manual control ring and is capable of recording 4K-video to complement its stellar stills. Although the lens does extend out of the body of the handset, it is not a zoom lens, that is purely an adjustment for focusing purposes.

Its 1-inch sensor is the size you would usually find in an enthusiast compact, and the handset comes with a dedicated button for the camera function, making it as equally a compact camera and a smartphone. We do think that the company appears to be marketing it as a camera with communication capabilities, rather than a smartphone with a great camera, as you can see in the short promo video below.

Looking at it from a smartphone angle, the specs includes a 4.7-inch 1080p display, a 2.3GHz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 CPU, 2GB RAM, 16GB storage – typical of a higher end Android device we see on the market today. As for those already worrying about memory capacity for taking photos and shooing videos, the CM1 of course comes with microSD card support allowing expansions by up to an additional 128GB.

Panasonic Lumix CM1

The Panasonic Lumix CM1 weighs 240g and measures 21mm in thickness, but its 2600mAh battery could be slightly disappointing to support the handset’s functionality over extended periods. According to The Verge, the device is not planned for a UK launch unfortunately, or at least not yet until Panasonic determines whether it is fit for a wider market. The CM1 will be arriving in Germany and France first, priced at around 900 euros. The price tag seems a little high, but we will have to wait and see if the handset packs enough functions to interest photo enthusiasts further down the line.

Kai-Li is a tech enthusiast with an in-depth knowledge of mobile technology, music technology and the entertainment industry. She hails from Taiwan and helps Tech Assimilate to erm... assimilate, all the latest tech news and trends from East Asia. Kai-Li Yang on Google+